"OWN IT" - HOW TO OWN YOUR FITNESS JOB

In this episode, we discuss the power of the simple statement, “Do your job.” and what it really means to own your fitness job in small business. We will also discuss how to implement it into your company culture. ‘Do Your Job’ is a simple yet powerful statement that can help a fitness business or a team achieve all their goals, but to really “own your job” goes a step further.

“Do your job” is similar to our Alloy Core Value # 1 – “Own it.” Both statements mean that you have to own your role and perform it diligently. In small businesses, you may need support from others, and part of owning it involves working with the rest of the team and understanding what they are doing.

We ran across the story behind “Do your job” in a documentary on “The Art of Coaching” with football Coaches Bill Belichick and Nick Saban. They are friends and have the same coaching philosophy. Some of their core principals as it relates to football include:

Players have an assignment and a responsibility to execute that assignment.
Coaches need to be credible for players to buy-in.
Coaches need to hold players accountable.

As a leader of a fitness business, you have to make your team “own it” and perform their job. From a leadership standpoint, the “do your job” statement solves a lot of problems, but from the perspective of a small business owner “own your job” takes it a level further. Now from a football perspective doing your job is enough, but from a small business perspective owning your role means you may need to go a step further and look at all the moving parts and working with the team to get things done. In the fitness business you don’t want staff to be limited and say that’s not my job. In small business it makes more sense to own your role. whatever that is. So probably not a direct crossover from the football field, but “Do your job” and “Own it” makes a lot of sense.

How to Make the Fitness Team “Own It” and “Do your Job”

First: Set Expectations

First thing you need to do to establish how to own your fitness job is to set up job descriptions with clear expectations for their roles and job functions. Some of the expectations can be numbers driven or established with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Like what Peter Drucker said, “what gets measured gets managed.” With job descriptions and goals in place, team members will know what is expected of them when you tell them to do their job.

For example, one role in the Alloy small group training business model is our Director of Training, which is interchangeable with the term for general manager. Their position is in charge of the whole club. So essentially, anything that’s going on with sales, personnel, clients, the building, cleaning, and maintenance issues, like like broken equipment. Then KPI’s or metrics to measure include leads, leads that book appointment, appointment show/no show, and how many converted to memberships.. And then at the end, there’s retention.Retention shows if you are doing a good job on the back end with keeping members happy and coming back? Those are all the high level metrics. That is why the Director owning his role is better than just doing his job because of all the moving parts and decisions needing to be made.

Second: Create a Culture

Now the second thing to support the own it mantra, you need to create a culture in the gym where everybody owns their role. Now why is culture the hardest thing to do?

As an example, we went through an exercise based on the book The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team by Lencioni. The book outlines a powerful model and actionable steps to overcome hurdles and build a cohesive and effective team. It is no easy exercise. The exercise ends in teams realizing they have to hold each other accountable to do their job. The peers will hold themselves accountable whether that’s coach to coach, or coach to front desk staff, or even desk staff to coach. It doesn’t matter, right? Build culture where it’s not just top down accountability, but holding everyone accountable and everyone understands their roles. They do their job and they expect you to do your job. If you don’t do your job, the whole team is going to notice. This is how culture helps the whole organization grow and get better.

Tune in to this episode to learn of the different roles in a small group personal training business. Also learn how the Alloy franchise business model supports each team member to “own your fitness job” and enshrine this culture in your business.

Key Takeaways

Doing your job with conviction (05:23)
What gets measured gets managed (07:47)
Why you need to set clear expectations for your team so that they can then do their job (08:11)
The roles and expectations of the Director of Training and they can own this position (09:12)
The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing (12:15)
How to ensure the trainers and coaches are doing their job (13:00)
How often to meet with the coaches and the team (17:42)
What is ‘do your job’ for the front desk and customer service team (19:41)
How to create a culture in the gym where everybody owns their role and does their job (23:39)